Zal Sissokho - La Source
Disques Nuits d'Afrique / Believe
Senegalese griot messenger and singer-songwriter, Zal Sissokho, is set to enchant us once again with his kora playing. His latest album, La Source, is composed of nine masterful pieces by this kora master. This time, he is accompanied by two exceptional Montreal musicians from Malian griot traditions, Djely Tapa and Diely Mori Tounkara, as well as fellow countryman and album co-producer, Élage Diouf, his music brother who introduced him to Quebec’s music scene a good twenty years ago. Zal’s fond memories of this period gave rise to La Source, a token of gratitude to the man who paved the way for this cultural milieu to emerge in the first place. With these three friends of like backgrounds, the primal force of the Mandinka Empire, which carries on through praise and dignity, naturally emerges, along with an appreciation its authentic language, ancestral yet so modern, as a living soul opening up to stories from a source that never runs dry… These new melodies are a testament to an exemplary mastery of the legendary instrument that Zal Sissokho embodies, the 21 strings resonate with West African tradition as much as with the present day.
TRACKLIST
- Xarit
- Bour
- Labannya feat Djely Tapa
- Tidiane Diebate
- La Source feat Diely Mori Tounkara
- Djeliya feat. Djely Tapa
- Kela feat. Élage Diouf
- Badinya
- La Dignité
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
His story is written on the stings of the kora… it is how Zal Idrissa Sissokho, in all his mystique, reveals himself. Loyal to African griot traditions, this artist from Kolda, in southern Senegal, transmits history and age-old wisdom while taking a candid, poetic look at both his contemporary world and the past. Venerable member of this great griot family that harks back to the 13th century, and to the first Sissokho griot, “a man of science and truth, a master of words,” Zal stands with pride by his muse, the kora. As a singer-songwriter, he honours his linage by singing in Malinke and Wolof, a tribute to the noble oral tradition of Sundiata Keita’s Mandinka Empire.